Category: History
Door County is rich in history, from its most prominent founding citizens to the business leaders who embraced tourism to make it the destination it is today. It’s a history of orchards, farming, and fishermen, but also of potters, artists, and writers. But more than anything, it’s a history told in the lives of the remarkable people who’ve called it home for a spell or a lifetime. Door County Pulse tells them all.
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Preservation and Re-purposing at Horseshoe Bay Farms
The Door County Community Foundation recently awarded the Egg Harbor Historical Society grants from the Historic Preservation Fund and The Clifford & Clara Herlache Heritage Foundation to support the development of a master plan to determine what is needed to preserve and re-purpose the Horseshoe Bay Farms structures.
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Chateau Hutter: Door County’s Grand Resort that Never Was
Maybe it’s the name, tasting of a past barely tangible. Maybe it’s the location, nestled into the quiet stretch of shoreline between Sturgeon Bay and Egg Harbor along Bay Shore Drive, hiding on the scenic shortcut so many locals turn to when summer weekend traffic backs up Highway 42. Like the crumbling barns of the […]
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A little bit of Sister Bay died today. When I drove through downtown Sister Bay, it was gone. Johnny’s Cottage, a Sister Bay icon, later the Sister Bay Café, was leveled by a wrecking crew.
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Six Storied History: The Otumba
What if a multi-story, luxury hotel was built in downtown Sturgeon Bay? How would Sturgeon Bay and the peninsula be different? A six-story, 100-room luxury resort just feet from the Sturgeon Bay Shipping Canal – this was in the cards for Door County in 1929. Come 1930, the stock market crash laid waste to these […]
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The Cemeteries of Peninsula State Park
As a small child visiting Peninsula State Park one brisk autumn, my father took me by the hand and led me across the street from Weborg Point into the woods. We moved precariously down an unmarked, overgrown trail and emerged into a small cluster of gravestones, slightly pitching and yawing from the earth the way […]
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Ephraim: Last Dry Town Standing
In recent years, visitors to the small town of Ephraim, population 288, have noticed that shrinking water levels have left parts of the town’s waterfront high and dry. When it comes to alcohol sales, Ephraim has always been a dry town. In fact, it’s the last remaining dry town in the state of Wisconsin. Ephraim’s […]
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Captain Justice Bailey was lucky. In 1848 he escaped a storm on Lake Michigan by guiding the Gazelle safely into the harbor that would later bear his name, escaping the fate of an estimated 31 other vessels that wrecked or stranded on the treacherous outer reef that is covered by very shallow water. Baileys Harbor […]
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Horseshoe Bay Farms Still Stands Tall
On April 6, 1946, new father Charles Richard stopped into George LeMere’s Egg Harbor barbershop looking for a haircut and a lead on a job. “Al Erickson’s hiring down at Horseshoe Bay Farms,” LeMere told him. Charles drove down Horseshoe Bay Road to the farm, found Mr. Erickson, and was promptly offered a job. “Can […]
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Topelmanns’ Journey to Ephraim Began in WWII Germany
There’s surely no artist or art lover in Door County who isn’t familiar with the watercolors and oils of Karsten Topelmann and the acrylics of Ellen, his wife.
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Michael McArdle: Baileys Harbor’s Benefactor
He was Baileys Harbor’s own Horatio Alger character – the fifth of eight children of Irish immigrants James and Anne Fegan McArdle, born in 1874 in a modest frame house south of the village, who rose to the presidency of a national corporation. Michael McArdle earned the equivalent of a high school diploma at 15 […]
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Second Presentation of “Horseshoe Bay Farms: The Land, The Players, Their Place in History”
Due to an overwhelming demand, the Door County Historical Society is offering another presentation of “Horseshoe Bay Farms: The Land, The Players, Their Place in History,” by Glenn Timmerman.
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Horseshoe Bay Farms Earns Historic Designation
Horseshoe Bay Farms is now on the National Registry of Historic Places. The iconic buildings of the farms, owned by Glenn and Barbara Timmerman, were added to the registry last month after two years of research by Glenn Timmerman that unearthed old photos, stories and film footage.
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Ula Noble: A Woman Before Her Time
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Noble House sits on the corner at the foot of the Fish Creek hill. Alexander Noble built the home in 1875, his 22-year-old daughter Ula designing the floor plan. In a sense this act served as an emblem for her life, as well as for those […]
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The Remarkable Life of Artist Gerhard Miller
For most boys, growing up in Sturgeon Bay in the early years of the 20th century – whooping through the woods, skating, sailing and swimming – being felled by polio at age 10 would have been a tragedy. For Gerhard Carl Friedrich Miller, once the agony of recovery was over, his illness led directly to […]
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The Early Days: Door County Postal Service
While the Constitution gave Congress the authority to establish post offices and post roads, it would not be until 1854 that the first post office was established in Door County. Thirty-three years after a post office opened in Green Bay, one opened on Washington Island – the most remote locale along the rugged, unsettled wilderness […]
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The Roots of the Peninsula’s Postal Service
Today the U.S. Postal Service is an independent branch of the federal government, and its performance is under chronic scrutiny by Congress and users. Critics, however, often seem oblivious to the postal service’s contribution to the American way of life. In colonial times, people communicating in writing depended on friends, merchants, and even Native Americans […]
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Hank Eckert: Sister Bay’s One-time Postmaster
Watching my grandfather Hank Eckert’s weathered hands sift through relics of mail, he smiles and says, “You have a big job ahead of you!” He has had a big job – as a soldier in World War II and the former postmaster of Sister Bay – and quite a happy life. Henry George Eckert, born […]
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Peterson Builders and The Avenger Class Minesweeper
Sitting in the room of his home dedicated to Peterson Builders’ history, Ellsworth Peterson can point to any of the relics from his career with the company and tell a story. The work permit he obtained to help his father in the shipyard hangs in a frame on the wall. His hard hat rests on […]
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Door County’s Lake and Bay View Bus Line
When the United States entered World War II t effort required contributions from every corner of the country, including a little bus depot in Sister Bay.
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The Rise and Fall of the Ahnapee & Western Railway
For most people today, the initials A&W bring to mind a frosty mug of root beer, but for nearly a century folks in northeast Wisconsin knew it as shorthand for the Ahnapee & Western Railway. Mark Mathu grew up in New Franken, Wisconsin, about 35 miles south of Sturgeon Bay in Brown County, where the […]